Chemical reactors are well known in the art and may take a number of different forms. For example, some of the well known types of reactors include, but are not limited to batch reactors, stirred tank reactors, continuous stirred tank reactors (CSTRs), tubular reactors, multiple-pass reactors, fixed bed reactors, fluidized bed reactors and spouted bed reactors. These last three are specific types of catalytic reactors.
Most commercial reactors are relatively large, on the order of tens of feet tall, which require that they remain permanent fixtures to the operating site. Chemical reaction devices which are portable most often refer to laboratory or bench scale equipment, which are not suitable for the production of large volumes of products. Skid- or trailer mounted reactors, are known, of course, where appreciable quantities of a certain material are required and it is also desired that the overall unit be modular or portable, but these tend not to be catalytic systems.
However, there remains a need for different kinds of portable catalytic chemical reactors which produce appreciable volumes of chemicals in good yields. It would be an additional advantage if the reactor were somewhat modular so that modules could be added to the system to adjust the capacity of the reactor system. A small reactor using aluminum tubes coated with copper as a catalyst was reported by Xing and Inoue, Kagaku Kogaku Ronbunshu, Vol. 10, No. 4, 439-45 (1984).